Guitar Hero Live Announced Along With New Controller

Activision has announced their resurrection of Guitar Heroearlier than expected. Today they revealed Guitar Hero Live is in development at FreeStyleGames, the studio that made DJ Hero and DJ Hero 2.

Guitar Hero Live has two new game modes. The namesake mode, GH Live, lets players play guitar from a first-person point of view in front of a crowd. The venues include an outdoor festival and a tiny club. This live-action crowd will react to the quality of your performance in real-time. If you're sucking, they're going to let you know it.

The other mode is called GHTV. This mode lets you play along to a collection of music videos being updated throughout the day.

"Fans can pick from multiple channels and themed shows, discovering new songs as they play, and can also choose songs to play on-demand," Activision says. "In GHTV, fans can also play with their friends in the same room and against players from around the world to see who has the highest score on a given song, while completing challenges along the way. GHTV is a living, breathing platform that serves as an ever-growing source for new music discovery while further bringing the party atmosphere back to the living room."

Guitar Hero's signature controller, meanwhile, has been redesigned. There are now two rows of three buttons along the peripheral. Beginners can get their feet wet by just playing the bottom three buttons. Over time, though, you'll likely learn how to pull off complex chord combinations with both rows.

The full song list for Guitar Hero Live wasn't announced yet. However, Activision did mention it contains "hundreds of songs". They also confirmed the following artists: The Black Keys, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Gary Clark, Jr., Green Day, Ed Sheeran, The War on Drugs, The Killers, Skrillex, The Rolling Stones, The Lumineers, Carrie Underwood, Pierce the Veil and Blitz Kids.

In the past, Guitar Hero games were released on consoles or mobile but never both. FreeStyleGames is bucking that trend with Guitar Hero Live by making the game available on consoles, smartphones and tablets. The supported consoles are the PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U. The specific mobile devices for the game will be announced soon.

Select retailers are already accepting pre-orders for the console versions. The only bundle mentioned thus far is a standard edition with the game and controller for $99.99.

Guitar Hero Live is slated to launch this fall. That means it's going head-to-head with Rock Band 4, another revival of a dormant music franchise.